Friday round-up

Posted Fri, June 7th, 2013 9:03 am by Allison Trzop

Court watchers continue to discuss Maryland v. King, Monday’s five-to-four decision in which the Court upheld a Maryland law that authorizes the collection of DNA samples from individuals arrested for “serious crimes.” Coverage comes from the editors at Federal Evidence Review, while commentary comes from Ed Mannino at his eponymous blog and Will Baude at PrawfsBlawg. Also at PrawfsBlawg, Dan Markel responds to Barry Friedman’s recent post at Slate (which Matthew covered in yesterday’s round-up for this blog), questioning whether there is empirical support for the proposition that “felony arrestees are not in fact more likely to have ties to other crimes than a randomly selected individual.”

At Bloomberg Businessweek, Lisa Lerer and Greg Stohr report on a recent poll indicating that more than half of Americans support allowing same-sex couples to marry; those results, they suggest, “illustrate that much of the public would prefer a more sweeping response from the high court” in the pending same-sex marriage cases, Hollingsworth v. Perry (the challenge to California’s Proposition 8) and United States v. Windsor (the challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act). At NPR, Nina Totenberg interviews retired Chief Justice Margaret Marshall of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the author of the 2003 decision striking down that state’s ban on same-sex marriage.

In his “SCOTUS for law students” feature for this blog, Stephen Wermiel looks at Salinas v. Texas, in which the Court is considering when the right to remain silent begins and how it applies to questioning that occurs before someone is actually in police custody.

Alexander Wohl, author of a new book on Justice Tom Clark and Attorney General Ramsey Clark, writes about the historically unique father-son pair for ACSblog.

Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys work for or contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the co-counsel to the petitioner in Salinas. Also, Tejinder Singh of Goldstein & Russell was among the counsel on an amicus brief filed by international human rights advocates in support of the respondents in Perry. And Kevin Russell of Goldstein & Russell was among the counsel on an amicus brief filed by former senators in support of Edith Windsor.

If you have (or know of) a recent article or post that you would like to have included in the round-up, please send a link to roundup [at] scotusblog.comso that we can consider it.

Upcoming Oral Arguments

3/31Kimble v. Marvel Enterprises, Inc. Whether the Court should overrule Brulotte v. Thys Co., which held that “a patentee’s use of a royalty agreement that projects beyond the expiration date of the patent is unlawful per se”.

4/20Johnson v. United States Whether possession of a short-barreled shotgun is a violent felony, leading to a longer prison term as a career criminal.

4/21McFadden v. United States A federal prosecutor’s duty to prove that a suspect knew that a substance was an illegal substitute for a banned drug.

4/22Horne v. Department of Agriculture The federal government’s duty to pay raisin growers for an order requiring removal of part of a year’s crop from the market to stabilize prices.

On Monday afternoon Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer testified before the House Appropriations Committee. The purpose of the hearing was to discuss the Court’s budget for the next fiscal year and the federal judiciary, but the legislators also took full advantage of the occasion to touch on other topics as well.